Top News

A California woman who says she was swindled out of more than $6 million as the victim of a plot worthy of a television drama has filed a Cook County Circuit Court complaint against a Chicago firm and one of its attorneys.

A group of about 5,500 manufacturers, metal fabricators and others who bought steel from eight American steelmakers about a decade ago have announced a $30 million deal with three of those mill operators – a settlement the parties intend would cap off a massive antitrust class action lawsuit accusing the steelmakers of manipulating supply to boost prices for their steel products.

A little less than a year after Walgreens and some of its shareholders moved to settle a class action over a lack of disclosures to shareholders who said they were concerned over the company’s merger with European retail pharmacy operator Alliance Boots, objectors to that settlement deal are hoping a federal appeals court will toss out or rewrite the settlement over concerns the deal is little more than a $370,000 payoff to trial lawyers.

A fed up federal judge has yanked the plug on a New England vacuum cleaner company’s effort to force test results from a rival Chicago vacuum maker, warning the company it is flirting with sanctions if it keeps trying to inflate an alleged false advertising case beyond its parameters.

An Illinois woman’s false advertising complaint against Johnson & Johnson is allowed to proceed after a judge denied the company’s motion to dismiss, saying the woman had done enough so far to allow her to argue Johnson & Johnson misled her and others into buying products the company claimed were clinically proven to help babies sleep better. Stephanie Leiner, of Chillicothe, filed a class action lawsuit July 2 in federal court in Chicago against N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson.

Families of victims of a fiery oil-fueled train derailment and explosion that claimed 47 lives in a town on the eastern edge of Canada’s Quebec Province will need to press their wrongful death claims in federal court, after lawyers for Canadian Pacific Railway and other corporate defendants asked to transfer cases from local to federal jurisdiction.

Former shareholders who owned minority positions in a commodity trading firm have no malpractice case against their onetime attorneys, because the case is based on the incongruity of pursuing individual claims on behalf of a corporation, the state’s high court has ruled. On Sept. 24, the Illinois State Supreme Court ended the latest round in a legal battle that dates back to 2005, when several minority shareholders in Beeland Management LLC hired the law firm of McGuireWoods to sue Beeland.

Aon Corporation has sued the former CEO of its subsidiary in Bolivia for fraud and misconduct it alleges cost the company more than $20 million and the ability to do business at all in the South American country.